What a weekend!

Well, we are most certainly into the final wind up for Thanksgiving, and winter. Mike and I spent Saturday out at my mom's, cutting firewood and helping her with some stuff around the house before having dinner and a small belated birthday celebration. :) I think we ended up bringing nearly a full face cord home, and spent a couple of hours yesterday sawing, splitting and stacking it. Well, Mike sawed and split, and I stacked - Jen and chainsaws are not compatible!

Fall weather has settled in with gusto in the last week, with wicked cold winds blowing off the lake and churning up waves, as well as stripping the leaves off the trees. The chickens are loving their expanded digs, though the high winds have kept them rather close to shelter. The weekend was clear and cool, with temps down around 30 overnight with heavy frosts, and highs during the day of around 50. We still haven't kicked the furnace on, but we did finally gave to the need for heat last night. Mike built the first fire of the year in the woodstove in the living room, and in short order we were roasty toasty in there. Made me realize how cool the house has really been of late. I think we were somewhere in the neighborhood of 52 degrees inside both Saturday and Sunday...definitely cause for some heat!

I think we're going to end up investing in a programmable thermostat. Would definitely help keep the gas bill down when we finally do kick the furnace on. Depending on how much sun we get, I don't know how much heat we'll have to run, to be honest, until the temperatures really dip. Though, one of the guys from the floor today mentioned a good side of this steady cold - it's dropping the temperature of the lake fast, which should help us out with snow once the winds shift.

I can't believe how rapidly time has been passing though. The more I think about it, the more I realize that come next Friday, I'm off for ten days...which, ordinarily would be cause for celebration, but in this case is rather nerve-wracking! Mike's dad and fiancee will be rolling into town via train on the 20th, and staying until the 24th, and his aunt and her girlfriend will be coming in Thanksgiving morning.

We have sooooo much to do in preparation. When I talked to Mike at lunch he was sanding drywall, trying to see how much more mudding he had to do before we can prime and paint. I know that I'll be working on texturing the walls this evening, and probably every evening until it's finished - once that's done it'll be prime and paint the walls as well. Well, I'm sure we're do the whole job all at once. :) I can't wait to see what the final result is!
Slowing getting more egg customers...though right now we're in excess of 6 dozen ahead of 'em! Ah well, we'll get there. Definitely will have plenty of eggs for deviled eggs come Turkey Day :)

Hmmm...lemme think...what else is going on....oh, something kinda cool for me...I was made moderator on a discussion board I belong to this past weekend. Considering we're all a rather well-behaved group, not sure how much moderating I'll be doing, but it's nice to have people I respect have that kind of confidence in me. The board is called The Green Branch, and I've included a link in the sidebar if anyone wants to drop in and visit. We touch on all sorts of topics, but the board is described as a "Politics, news, sustainability, self-sufficiency, alternative discussion forum". You can read some of the posts without becoming a member, so take a look and see what you think :)